Competitive SEO Analysis: Why it’s Important

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If You Want to Get Ahead of Ottawa’s Online Marketing Curve, Get Ready to Meet the Competition

To boost their online marketing, Ottawa businesses need to keep a watchful eye on the local competition—especially when they’re being outperformed. When your business needs a boost, you need to find out who’s coming in first in local SEO, and figure out what’s putting them on top. This is the essence of a competitive analysis.

Identify Your Competition

This is the easy part. You can even do this part yourself—start by doing a local Google search for keywords related to your business. Who ranks first for each keyword? Does the same business rank well for multiple keywords? Who’s consistently on the first page? Congratulations, you’ve just met your competition! Now things get trickier.

Do Your Homework

In 513 BCE, in The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred [SERPs].” (I may have made a slight adjustment.) To know your biggest competitors intimately, look at their strategies from every angle you can. Do they have a Google+ page? Are details like their location, phone number, and business hours listed? Now look at their website and landing pages. Do they make good use of keywords and geo modifiers, specifically in headings and page titles? Is the site well-designed, and is important information readily available? Do pages includes effective calls-to-action? Is there a content strategy (i.e. blogging)? What about social media and video marketing? Whip out your cellphone or tablet, and see if they have a well-designed mobile or responsive site. Back on Google, look for advertising (PPC) and brand mentions, too.

Next, you’ll need to look at some technical SEO elements—specifically links. Ottawa’s online marketing experts use different tools to build link profiles of competitors. The question to ask is, are they being linked to by authoritative sources in the industry? Quantity is nice; quality is better.

Take It to the Next Level

Online marketing in Ottawa, as in other cities across the country, is an ongoing process. Once you’re familiar with what the competition is doing, then it’s your turn to do the same, only much better. And this is one reason why your competitive analysis needs to be both thorough and frequent—once a month is ideal. The other reason is that there’s a good chance the companies you analyse are analysing you too. They’ll be stepping up their game at every opportunity. If you plan to keep up, you need to be ready to do the same.

Get Started Now

There are online marketing tools Ottawa companies can use in their competitive analysis, but the truth is that the best analysis is done professionally. By employing experts who know how to effectively interpret the information, you will have the power to implement an action plan that covers all your bases. To start getting ahead of the curve, you can contact SEO TWIST today. The competition isn’t waiting to get started, and neither should you!